


The Night-Seer: Rider Yates Cardell

by hermitknut



Series: In Messenger Green [2]
Category: Green Rider Series - Kristen Britain
Genre: Art, Gen, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 19:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11950644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermitknut/pseuds/hermitknut
Summary: After a long ride, it's good to ease away some of the tension.





	The Night-Seer: Rider Yates Cardell

It was a good spot.

Yates was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to sit in the crenellations, but as far as he was concerned that was irrelevant. What _was_ relevant was that, with his back and feet against either side of the gap, he not only could comfortably prop his sketchpad on his knees to draw but also was in the full light of the early-morning sun. He didn’t have the clearest view of the countryside, but he _did_ have an interesting angle on the city, spilling out around the keep like a puddle on uneven ground.

He turned his sketcher’s charcoal around in his hand, thinking.

He’d been on a long errand, all the way to the western side of Ullem Bay, and only returned yesterday. A long errand, he had concluded, meant a big sketch. He could just feel the tension from the ride draining away as he tried a few lines. And he had been trying to capture Sacor City properly for quite some time. Yates generally preferred drawing people – drawing the life in them, that was the challenge. But the city here had its own kind of life. And besides, he wanted to be able to show his ma when he next saw her.

Yates had grown up in a little village in the Penburn hills, with he and his five siblings spilling out of the cottage  every day to run errands, help their parents, and infrequently slip away to play games and explore the surrounding countryside. His ma and da had had the help of his ma’s sister and her – well, they weren’t officially married, but that didn’t matter. To Yates they had always been his Aunty Soni and Aunty Rivi, and no one seemed to mind. With six children running around there was always something to do – the more adults to help, the better. The farm did well, and every now and then his da would drive produce out to the nearest crossroads for the market where the bigger traders would buy it to sell on.

Yates hadn’t done well with letters – he could manage but it wasn’t easy, they all seemed to jumble up somewhere between his eyes and his brain – but he could handle figures, and sketching was… well, it was the best. There had been talk of perhaps scrounging up a little coin to take some of his sketches to Teckry, the nearest big town, and see if there was a way to make something of this talent, somehow.

But then the Rider Call came. Quiet Yates, who of all the six of them spoke the least of other places and seemed the most content with his little hill-village life, heard the hoof beats in his dreams, packed a bag and walked to Sacor City, twenty times further from home than anyone he knew had ever been.

He’d taken his sketch book with him.

That first one was full now, mostly of the road and forests and towns he had passed through on the way. Sketching a place made it less strange. He could walk into somewhere unfamiliar and feel nervous, but once it was down on paper he felt like he knew it, at least a little. These days he drew as much as he could, sending most of his pay home but keeping enough for paper and pens. He’d gone from knowing one small part of the world like the back of his hand to seeing more new sights than he could list, and he spent hours of his time trying to pin them to paper.

When he had been injured on a ride, four years ago, Tegan and Garth had banded the others together and bought him his first proper paints. He treasured them, and used them only often enough to grow confident.

The biggest painting he had ever done had required a group pooling of money again, to get a decent sized canvas and some extra colours. It had been a gift, from the Rider Corps. A wedding gift. After getting Tegan and Mara to wriggle things out of Karigan, and speaking himself to Captain Mapstone about the king, he had decided on the image. It was a long painting depicting a line of coast – on one side, the Hillander seafront, based on some sketches he had done when passing through a year or so before. On the other, the busy shores of Corsa, with their tangled docks. The middle part had taken some imagination; he had invented some elements and allowed one coast to blur into the other, as though they were two parts of the same place. Then all the Rider Corps had left a signature or a short message on the back of the canvas.

When Yates had delivered yesterday’s message to the king, the painting had been hung on the wall of the royal study. He’d been so pleased he’d fumbled all his usual proper manners, but King Zachary had just smiled.

He turned his attention to the shape of the city wall snaking out around the buildings and streets. He had a while to get this right; no duties until lunchtime. But the Riders were busy these days, and he could be sent out again at short notice. Best to get at least an outline today, while the light was good.


End file.
